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Today we enjoyed a day off for Anzac Day. Kind of weird having a Thursday off, but not going to argue! If only I had looked at a calendar before I booked our "long weekend" trip to the Blue Mountains. I'm so used to holidays being on Mondays in the US that I just assumed we had next Monday off. I realised my mistake just after I purchased the plane tickets, so now in addition to having today off we are also taking Monday off. Oops :)
I am guessing that most of you have never heard of Anzac Day before, so here is an explanation courtesy of Wikipedia:
Anzac Day marks the anniversary of the first campaign that led to major casualties for Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. The acronym ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, whose soldiers were known as Anzacs. Anzac Day remains one of the most important national occasions of both Australia and New Zealand, a rare instance of two sovereign countries not only sharing the same re…

By far the most complicated part of living in another country is the taxes. For the US, April 15 is tax day, the day your 2012 taxes are due if you are a US citizen who earned income in the country. Unfortunately, that includes us because A. we were renting out the condo and B. one of Phil's 2011 pay checks was paid in 2012.

Doing US taxes is not a simple process to begin with. But then try throwing in some foreign income. On top of that add a different tax year because the Australia tax year runs July 2011- June 2012. Then consider that in Australia everyone files individual returns and our return in the US is filed jointly. Because of all this confusion Ernst and Young took nine months to finish our 2011 return. It was 163 pages!!!! This meant we didn't get the return until December last year, 5 months after our June 2012 Oz return was due.

I was told Australian taxes are a lot easier to do so I started trying to do them myself. With the difference in fiscal years …

Thank you both for the opportunity to visit with you. What an amazing country this is. Thank you for sharing your time to show us around. It was great to watch Phil finish his second Ironman. You are the best!! We love both of you and are unable to express our gratitude for this chance to be here.

For the Labour Day long weekend in March we made a repeat trip with our running friends to a great little island between mainland Australia and Tasmania called King Island. It's a quirky little place with a population just over 1000 known for its beef, cheese, and suicidal wallabies. It takes just over 50 minutes on a 10-seater plane to travel back in time to this funny little island.

We went for the King Island Imperial 20, a 32-k run across the island. Phil and some of our group did the solo 32k run and the rest of us did 8k legs as part of a relay team. Last year it was the longest run I'd ever done. This year it was a piece of cake. Or rather cheese. While I have no intentions of ever running 32k by myself, it's nice to know that I can easily run an 8k coming off being sick. Who knows, there might even be a 10k race in my future.

This long weekend was basically the last hurrah of summer. We took advantage of the beautiful weather and beach house location to st…